I just want to share how I paint this portrait! This is my personal project, I’m just doing some sketches using my wacom intous3 with TableDraw, end up drawing a naked women. In all of my artwork, I generally try to express a felling, to tell a story.

Concept Sketch

Some artist choose, colors as their main composition, here I choose line as my base composition because I want to focus in airbrush like render effect.

I’m using TableDraw, a simple drawing application for mac, it allow me to focus in my composition unlike with Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter

Books for Digital Painting

Coloring Process

Lets bring it to photoshop and add some line details specially in head region.

I add new layer and name it “skin base”, I always my name layers for easy reference, this is handy when working with many layers I also group my layers. I choose a base color for my subject then I use a soft round airbrush type of brush make sure the air brush icon is turn on. This will be my base color foundation and later I add darker shades to give depth to my subject.

I use lower opacity like 25% and flow 25% with normal mode I just experiment with my settings.

All about Shading

Form is nothing but a bunch odd shadows and highlights “The Light of the sun on an object and the shadow the light create is what defines its shape” without those contrast no shape seen at all. To make something in your artwork have form, you must give it rage of dark and lights. To put it simply, you really need to know how to shade.

Read more about Shading at this link: Understanding the Art of Shading

Rotating, Panning, Zooming

What I really like about Photoshop CS4 is the rotate canvas view. If you use a graphic tablet, you’re going to love this new feature. I can now rotate my canvas to any desire angle, making the use of a pen much easier when doing render on my canvas.

Enter the rotate view tool, default hot key (R) or you can find it hiding beneath the hand tool (click and held on the hand and you will see it)

I create a new layer and name it skin tone 01 this will be our half tone, I render first the dark areas to add depth to my subject, I usually start shading on face area then add more darker tone. I create new layer and name it skin tone 2  and add shading to my subject , also use this as my base shade for the hair, later i’ll add more details.

This is the close up view on how I apply the shades, as you see the sketch line are visible and I need to remove this lines so I can focus on my subject.

I add Gausian Blur filter to soften the line sketch.

Now I add highlights  on my subject with lower opacity of my brush.

Continue the Part 02 Detailing >>>